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Tiger Blade" is the latest attempt by Thai
filmmakers to capitalize on the sudden success of
Thai action films, made popular by Tony Jaa's
exhilarating "Ong
Bak", and recently followed up with the
satisfying ass kicker "Tom
Yum Goong". Theeratorn Siriphunvaraporn's
"Tiger Blade" promises to take a more
fantastical approach to carnage making, utilizing
your standard cops and robbers setting but
involving characters with magical abilities, such
as one tough's power to "cancel out"
bullets with a magical talisman, while another has
made himself bulletproof with the help of black
magic. Alas, for a movie titled after a magical
sword, it's amusing to note that the sword makes
only occasional cameo appearances.
To combat a new, evil scourge
led by a rebel foreign Commander intent on
rebuilding his Thai-subjugated nation, supercop
Yos (Atsadawut Luengsuntorn), who is a sort of
freelance superagent for the Thai Government,
seeks out and finds (in record time, no less) the
Tiger Blade, which has the power to null black
magic. Helping Yos in his quest for truth,
justice, and the Thai way (not necessarily in that
order) is bountiful police babe Deung Dao
(Phimonrat Phisarayabud), a fat comic sidekick
with spousal problems, and a computer geek who
does computer geek stuff. And oh yeah, for some
reason Yos' boss seems to have a closet for an
office.
Constructed out of a script
that was in all probability written around the
action sequences, "The Tiger Blade" is
as nonsensical as Thai action movies have gotten
in the last few years, with a final 30 minutes
that is completely devoid of logic. In its quest
to keep the audience from becoming bored by its
lackluster story, action scenes pop out of nowhere
every 5 minutes or so without fail. The film opens
with Yos being ambushed in a hotel while having
sex with a prostitute (who falls in love with him
after the failed assassination attempt), where Yos
kills about a half dozen guys. It then proceeds to
a nightclub, where Yos kills another half dozen
more. The bodycount piles up at an astounding
rate, which provides more unintentional humor
given the film's odious attempts at censoring out
"unacceptable behavior" with digital
pixelation. More on this later.
Matters aren't helped by a
mediocre cast, including star Luengsuntorn, who
looks convincing enough trading punches and kicks
with the bad guys, but is working with dead money
when the guns are put away. His supposed comical
and gradual romantic interaction with pretty but
tough talking female partner Deung Dao is mired by
Phisarayabud's nonexistent personality. Comic
relief is provided by the fat sidekick and one
other scene, where Yos realizes that his young,
virginal sister is not so virginal after all. The
rest of the film is over-the-top wire-fu, endless
backstabbing and unmotivated plot machinations,
and exactly two uses of the titular Tiger Blade.
While the film's many
action-packed moments are appropriately wild and
unrealistic given the film's premise, it's also
mostly silly and cartoonish, and highly derivative
of action movies from
Hong Kong
in the last 10 years. Director Theeratorn
Siriphunvaraporn also shows an unhealthy disregard
for coherent storytelling. The film is full of
badly scripted moments, including what is supposed
to be Yos and Dao's eventual "bonding"
-- somewhat hard to achieve when Dao shows up for
about 10 minutes of total screentime in the film's
first hour. Where exactly did these two find time
to fall in love?
The film itself is a mess,
the kind of mindless mush that only
Hollywood
used to be able to crank out. A major Caveat
Emptor also goes out to readers interested in
grabbing the DVD. They should know that the Thai
Government, in their infinite wisdom, has
instituted what appears to be an industry wide
censorship program that is at best unhelpful, and
at worst reeks of stunted intelligence. Scenes of
people smoking cigarettes are heavily censored
with a digital blur, and whenever someone is
pointing a gun within 5 feet of someone else, the
dreaded blur returns, just big enough to cover the
gun, although the intention of the scene remains
clear. This is doubly horrific for cinema purist,
as half of the screen becomes blotted by an
unnatural Vaseline-like blur whenever characters
engage in Mexican standoffs, a plot gimmick
Siriphunvaraporn falls back on constantly, thus
worsening the situation.
As an exercise in pointless
style over substance, "The Tiger Blade"
rates a 2.5, but loses a full point for the
childish pixelation of "offending"
material. Curiously, a scene where a woman is
brutally beaten to a pulp while she is being raped
on a floor has arrived intact, minus censoring. I
guess in
Thailand
beating the crap out of a woman while you're
raping her is not as "harmful to
society" as a character leaning against a
wall smoking. If this type of censoring continues
out of
Thailand
, even on DVDs geared for foreign markets, look
for a complete absence of Thai movies in the
International market in a few short years.
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